Open Technology

In the practice of open education, the choice of tools and platforms can greatly influence usability, the ability to share, ownership and the protection of privacy. In our choices of technology, we might also consider how education might promote more ethical and sustainable online environments and practices.

Digital Tracking and Surveillance

Presented Materials

What is Open Technology?

There are many ways that “open technology” may be defined. Some define it simply in terms of cost. By this logic, if the tool is free to use, then it is “open enough”. At the other end of the spectrum, others insist an open technology needs to be open source.

We won’t be insisting on any one definition, but encourage you to ask the following questions when choosing a tool or platform:

Is there a cost? Is that cost born by the institution? The teacher? The students? Or perhaps some business model built on the collection and sale of personal information?

Are there limits to how people can participate? Are there functions that can only be used by instructors, not by students?

Can the resources that are produced be shared legally and easily? Can others find, access, and reuse materials and activities? Does the technology require something (an application, or a plugin, or a password) for people to access it?

Can the resource be revised, rebuilt, customized or remixed with other resources without needing an expensive tool?

Does the provider of the technology track user activity with the intention of monetizing it? If so, is the privacy policy transparent and trustworthy?

Does the technology support open standards and formats, making it easy to move work to other open tools?

Examples of open technology tools:

WordPress: an open source platform for web publishing, with a very large and active developer community contributing themes, plugins (added functionality), and practices.

SPLOT: Simplest Possible Learning Online Tool (or some other acronym). A SPLOT is a tool that is simplified to perform a single task as easily as possible, and without requiring the collection of personal data from users (such as user accounts). There is no single SPLOT technology, but Alan Levine has built many SPLOTs on top of WordPress.

The open source way is about applying the principles of open source software development beyond software. Beyond technology. Opensource.com is about sharing how the open source way can change our world in the same way the open source model has changed software.opensource.com

Why Open Technology?

Access: open technologies tend to reduce costs, allowing for participation from a wide range of people.

Flexibility: adoption of open standards reduces dependence on any one tool or platform. Open technologies tend to work better with one another than proprietary ones.

Independence and freedom: if you own the technology, you are not at the mercy of a provider that may decide for its own reasons that it cannot support what you do.

Using open technology does not eliminate these risks, but history suggests that it does reduce them.

Open Technology in Action

Beyond the attributes of the technology itself, an open technology project can be identified by how those tools are platforms are used: open participation, an ethic of sharing, a willingness to adapt to the evolving needs of its participants. Some examples:

https://femtechnet.org/ – “resources for learning more about feminism, cyberfeminism, and feminist theories of technology.”

http://umw.domains/ – “students, faculty, and staff to register their own domain name and associate it with a hosted web space… the opportunity and flexibility to design and create a meaningful and vibrant digital identity.”

Learn More about Open Technology

Reclaiming Innovation, Jim Groom and Brian Lamb. Includes a critique of the limitations of learning management systems such as Moodle as an open online platform.

Digital Detox 2018, Digital Learning and Inquiry (DLINQ), Middlebury College. Less about “open technology” and more about practices to ensure privacy, safety and control in a diverse online environments.

Open Technology Activities

These activities are an opportunity to explore one specific open technology tool that likely has usefulness at the teaching level. As you learn and experience the features of the tools, keep in mind how they demonstrate (or do not demonstrate) the principles of open technologies discussed earlier.

In this activity, you will dig a little deeper into an H5P tool, and work to build a sharable resource.

Acumalador reflection: advancing UDG with open technology

In your workgroup develop an idea that you propose for UdG to advance and expand the concept of open pedagogy using an open technology. It may be a strategy on how to use a certain tool, or an education initiative to promote more ethical or thoughtful uses of technology.